e Exchange Lectureship existing between the
University of Manitoba and the University of North Dakota. It was
printed in the "American Schoolmaster," December, 1916_

Having accepted the kind invitation of the University of Manitoba to be
one of the exchange lecturers from the University of North Dakota, for
the current year, I made inquiry as to the nature of the different
groups of people whom I should be expected to address. I did this so as
to be able to select appropriate themes for discussion.

For this gathering, therefore, semi-popular in character and made up, as
I was told it would be, of the more thoughtful and intelligent people of
the community, University, and city, I selected as my topic for
discussion, "The University and the Teacher."

To a group of educated men and women who have visions--people who are
characteristically looking beyond the present and trying to plan for the
development of a great democratic state and for the welfare of a free
people, I know of no line of thought more appropriate or suggestive.
This is true because in such a state and with such a people, the state
or provincial university is the recognized leader of thought and action.
And this is true since the one great function of such an institution is
to take the choice youth and maidens from the various sections of the
state and, thru the work of the class room day in and day out, week by
week, year after year, give them knowledge, shape their opinions, mold
their characters, and develop their minds, and then send them back into
society as recognized leaders of the next generation.

The topic is doubly suggestive when we stop to inquire as to what makes
a university or any other institution of learning--what it is that
really gives it its reputation, its character, its influence. What is
it, anyway? Its towering brick walls? Its libraries and its
laboratories? Its athletic prowess? Its beautiful campus? Why, no, of
course not. Not any one of these nor all of them combined, complete and
extended and excellent as they may be, or as useful as they all are,
ever yet made or ever can make a great university. A real university, or
any other institution of learning, is made up of the men and the women
who form its student and its teaching bodies. The character of the
institution, its very life blood, is drawn from them. Their points of
view, their motives, their scholarships, their visions, their
aspirations, make it what it is in